Valdai Club

Starting in February 2022, the developments in Ukraine have rapidly escalated into a military conflict on a scale that Europe hasn’t seen since World War II. The conflict involves large concentrations of ground forces and a broad range of modern weapons. It is radically different from the conflicts of the past few decades, when technologically advanced powers more or less successfully conducted military operations against a technologically much weaker adversary.

The crucial challenge for Russia, which has strong competencies in this area, is to maintain its lead. Those who manage to stay on the podium will be rewarded for their efforts through military- industrial cooperation, will develop their engineering capabilities and aligned scientific areas, and will gain firm guarantees of national security.

Man-portable air defence systems (MANPADS) are among the many types of weapons being supplied in large by Western countries to the Ukrainian armed forces in the current conflict. The most famous, both abroad and in Russia, were FIM-92 Stingers, which were supplied to the Afghan Mujahideen who fought against the local government and the Soviet troops supporting it.

The strategic situation for the United States is changing in connection with the growing confrontation with China. It is changing, perhaps, really uncomfortably for Washington, which could not have calculated in advance the promptness of China’s reaction and the consequences of maintaining a confrontational policy with Beijing and Moscow at once. This opens up a window of opportunity for Russia, since a confrontation with two opponents of equal strategic systems at once will be a burden for the United States, writes Valdai Club expert Alexander Yermakov.

A rather comical picture of the political continuity of the Biden team, which so vehemently criticised his predecessor, is emerging, writes Valdai Club expert Alexander Yermakov.

On the geopolitical side, the British plans for additional spending on the military sphere are a manifestation of a desire to play a more global role — largely linked to the arguments of Brexit supporters that a UK separate from the EU will have its hands freed in the global economic and political system, writes Alexander Yermakov, RIAC expert.

The Second Nagorno-Karabakh War has come, hopefully, to an end. The time has come for summarising events, and if political experts have a wide range of topics to choose from, from Erdogan's neo-Ottomanism to the role of Russia in the Transcaucasus or the degree of the betrayal’ of the Armenian prime minister, those interested in military technology are concentrating on one topic that has dominated the media since the beginning of the conflict.